I’ve lectured on the topic of failure a few times. (Failure was counter-intuitively the focus of my commencement speech to the ‘09 graduating class at DigiPen!) It gets attention… Was cool to see the January 2010 issue of Wired have a series of feature articles discussing the need to embrace failure.

The look inside the failure of Duke Nukem Forever was particularly insightful, and of course (sadly) quite relevant to the game development community.

Anyway, OneBigGame’s first game, Chime, has been released on Xbox Live Arcade, with 60% of proceeds donated to various children charities. The game was developed by Zoe Mode out of the UK. Massive kudos goes to the Zoe Mode team for making this happen.

Chime is a mesmerizing little game that absorbed me for a few hours the first time I booted it up. Definitely reminds me of Lumines, and related beat/block matching games… Very polished and fun overall.

Admittedly, my favorite part was getting the 50 point achievement “gift” when starting the game for the first time. A truly nice gesture, especially for GamerScore whores like me ;)

Having visited Brazil recently myself (to keynote at the annual SBGames conference), I share many of the same observations and conclusions. Though, sadly, I wasn’t able to make it out to the Oi Futura Nave school.

Of all the challenges and obstacles listed (ie, piracy, taxes, lack of funding, etc),  the most potent problem in my opinion is a complete mismatch of creative vision and business opportunity.

As James mentioned, “game makers in Brazil expect to jump in and start making AAA experiences like those they play.” Indeed, it was amazing how many indie/amateur/student developers I met who wanted to create the next Halo, WoW or GTA.

I kept telling them to stop looking towards America/the West for inspiration, and rather look to Korea. While the variables/conditions were obviously different, Korea had similar challenges. And yes, perhaps more so through business innovation, the industry evolved and prospered.

There are many opportunities to be had in Brazil right now, in spite of the current obstacles. It’s just hard to see them when you’re trying to code up your epic Halo killer idea.

This habit has come in handy now that I’m a freelance consultant. I not only track time spent on specific projects/clients, but also my overall work related activities. This chart graphs time percentages since I became freelance in April 2009 to the end of the year.

A few comments:

• Wow, so little time is actually spent on client work (aka “billable hours”). Not sure what the norm is…
• A lot of things overlap, like speaking at a conference and writing an article could also count towards business development and/or marketing.
• Feels like I don’t spend enough time doing business development, and way too little time on marketing/communications…
• Happy that “email” is not too high. My email time at IGDA was nearly 50%. FYI, this is random email and time spent clearing my inbox. Any project specific email would count as consulting time, for example.
• Sad to lose 13% of my time to travel, though that is when I do most of my reading…
• I still co-chair the IGDA-Montreal chapter. I always treated that as volunteer effort, even when I was working for IGDA proper. 5% feels right/realistic to me…
• Good to see “admin” stuff is not distracting me much.

Alright, will be interesting to see how the numbers play out in 2010 as I attempt to do more bizdev+marcom.

Indeed, the city is beautiful with so much to see and do. And, it is quite walkable. I walked the whole time between the various major sites and locations. That said, the city is hard to navigate. In part because the tourist maps are poorly designed, but also because the city is so dense and layered.

Shot outside my hotel room window.

My snazzy hotel, the Bernini Bristol behind the fountain in the Piazza Barberini.

The Spanish Steps.

The huge Christmas tree at the mid-point plateau of the Spanish Steps.

The obelisk and church at the top of the Spanish Steps.

Fancy Christmas decorations (this is the Fendi store) along the high fashion street Condotti.

Which of course, includes Hello Kitty

The Trevi Fountain.

The Pantheon.

A dig site from some old Roman temples along the Argentina road.

Vittariano: The alter/monument to honor fallen soldiers.

Church, obelisk and ruins part of the Forum/Coliseum site.

Part of the Forum.

The Coliseum at night.

Inside view of the Coliseum.

Cross-section of the dungeons under the Coliseum’s floor.

A gladiator mosaic within the Coliseum exhibit.

More ruins on the Coliseum grounds.

The Arch of Constantine and a hill + monastery viewed through one of the Coliseum archways.

Another church.

Another church (I think this one is the Maria Maggiore).

Walking towards the Vatican City.

Inside Saint Peter’s Square, view of the basilica.

Stretch of archway/columns surrounding the Square.

Saint Angelo’s Castle.

Saint Agenlo’s bridge across the Tiber river.

A semi-ruined basilica behind the fountain in the Piazza Republica.

Another church.

Another church.

Another obelisk, this one in Piazza Poppolo.

More impressive columns near Piazza Poppolo.

Not too shabby considering the limited exposure he had (see vs in-game image). This is part of is ongoing game series: see his Assassin’s Creed tower and Castle Crashers knight drawings.

• Jacksonville, FL (ASAE exec training)
• Las Vegas, NV (DICE Summit)
• Miami, FL (ASAE Great Ideas Conference)
• Halifax, Nova Scotia
• San Francisco, CA (Game Developers Conference)
• Philadelphia, PA
• Seattle, WA (DigiPen graduation)
• Copenhagen, Denmark
• Malmo, Sweden (Nordic Game Conference)
• Pittsburgh, PA (Game Education Summit + Korean Game Academy)
• Frankfurt, Germany (GAMEplaces)
• Washington DC (photo shoot)
• New Orleans, LA (SIGGRAPH)
• Toronto, ON (ASAE annual conference)
• Austin, TX (GDC Austin)
• Atlanta, GA (SIEGE)
• Washington DC
• Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (SBGames)
• Philadelphia, PA (GameX Summit)
• Toronto, ON (GameON:Finance)
• Montreal, QC (Montreal International Game Summit)
• Ottawa, ON

Without question, the travel highlight of the year was Rio. Wow! It’s beyond words… Hitting DICE for the first time was nice. The Miami trip had a lot of impact on me… Doing the commencement speech at DigiPen for students, moms and grandmas was truly an honor. Frankfurt was cool, but too quick. Ditto for New Orleans, though the humidity was insanely overwhelming. Also, finally nice to make it down to Austin - so much action, but I had never been previously. Anyway, each trip is special/different and I always make the most of the opportunity - both from a work and personal point of view.

2010 is starting out with a bang, with a client trip to Rome the first week of January. Then another client trip to Lima, Peru in mid-February. And, of course, San Francisco for GDC as usual.

Games-related

• Agile Game Development with SCRUM (draft)
• The Ethics of Computer Games

Leadership

• Get Back In the Box - Innovation From the Inside Out
• Team of Rivals - The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln
• Ten Rules for Strategic Innovators - From Idea to Execution
• The Designful Company - How to Build a Culture of Nonstop Innovation
• Tribes - We Need You to Lead Us

Business/Economics

• Arts, Inc. - How Greed and Neglect Have Destroyed Our Cultural Rights
• Creative Industries - Contracts Between Art and Commerce
• Deep Economy - The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future
• Free - The Future of a Radical Price
• Globility - Competing With Everyone From Everywhere For Everything
• Patronizing the Arts
• Who’s Your City - How the Creative Economy is Making Where to Live the Most Important Decision of Your Life
• Word of Mouth Marketing - How Smart Companies Get People Talking

Self-Help/Culture/Etc

• Awake At Work - 35 Practical Buddhist Principles for Discovering Clarity and Balance in the Midst of Work’s Chaos
• Do Good Design - How Designers Can Change the World
• Influence - The Psychology of Persuasion
• Outliers - The Story of Success
• Relationship Economics - Transform Your Most Valuable Business Contacts into Personal and Professional Success
• Super Crunchers - Why Thinking-by-Numbers Is the New Way to Be Smart

Of the bunch, the Lincoln bio-book, Team of Rivals, was particularly inspiring. It was a whopping 900 pages, but every page was dripping with insight.

In terms of actually doing innovation Ten Rules for Strategic Innovators was surprisingly pragmatic - and I could see it help many traditional game studios that are trying to make the transition to emerging markets and business models. Ditto for Super Crunchers, which was given out as sponsored swag (appropriately by EEDAR) during DICE last year. There were many aha! moments during both of these books.

The bulk of the business/economics books are my attempt to beef up my knowledge as it pertains to my cluster/economic development consulting efforts. Free was an awesome read, and another one that everyone on the biz side of games should read. Ditto for Word of Mouth Marketing, especially given the recent research on WoM’s impact on game sales.

Awake at Work, recommended by Intel’s Scott Crabtree at last year’s IGDA Leadership Forum, was my first foray into Buddhist influenced reading. Was deep and inspiring. Influence was awesome. I need to study it more, mwhouahaha!

While industry reps are in rage, they should not be overly surprised as they themselves claimed it would “never happen”. On a panel at Develop in Brighton, they stated it was an impossible task, but on principle they had to fight the fight.

It is the same panel that I got into a bit of a shouting match, blaming them for using the tax break fight as a distraction from doing real (hard) work on things they could effect and could have an impact on the UK industry.

I also made the bold claim that if a tax break did happen, it would have literally no impact on the UK situation. Meaning, a tax break is not some kind of all-in-one solution that would all of a sudden resolve all the challenges the UK community is facing.

As an example of progress, at roughly the same time, it was announced that £10million is being invested in the game industry to support education and the development of prototypes and original IP. Similar initiatives are popping up across the country.

Now we’re talking. Now we’re getting somewhere. This approach speaks more to the ecosystem nature of the industry and working to build things out and support efforts at a more organic level. Though, this gets marginal coverage/attention versus the tax debate…

Even Canada, with all its national and provincial aids, is at risk. Blamed for “buying the video game industry“, Canada needs to build a more holistic strategy to foster the community from top to bottom - not just chasing down big publishers to set up shop…

PS: Does anyone have details on the UK “brain drain” to Canada. UK reps continuously claim that they are losing their talent to Canada. But, I’ve never seen any real data or research. Is this a valid claim? Or, mainly based on anecdotes and really, all the UK talent is just shifting to some other sector in the UK?

First, I accuse developers of focusing too much on their ideas, and not enough about the business and marketing aspects. But, then Erin reminds us that all of our ideas suck anyway.

Then Jesse from EEDAR reveals that marketing spend has a much higher correlation to sales than quality (as gaged via review scores). And, more recent research from the Cowen Group reveals that review scores are the least important factor for game purchases.

So, is the best strategy to just put whatever crap in a box and market the hell out of it? Of course not. This is a complex system and it is hard to predict the effect of any single factor… Maybe publishers put more marketing dollars behind the games they believe will sell well to begin with. Perhaps a quality game is what’s needed to drive word-of-mouth referrals. Etc.

Thus a key challenge is finding the right balance. It’s not just about making an awesome game, and it’s not just about salesmanship.